'Wherever are you off to so late as this, Dollie?' he asked in astonishment. 'Are you not afraid to go along the dark streets with all the shot and shell flying about?'
'Oh, I've got used to them a long time ago!' said the little one very composedly. 'I always think it doesn't seem nice when the town is quiet now.'
Conrad had to confess that she was right, for people certainly do become accustomed to everything, even to the greatest danger.
'I am taking father some warm soup, because he is on duty to-night,' Dollie went on; 'then he won't feel the dark night so cold.'
'But why does not your mother take it?' asked Conrad.
'Oh, she isn't at home,' answered Dollie. 'She had to go with a great many more women to fetch water from the Münzbach,[3] and carry it right into the upper town. The Swedes have done something to the water-pipes there, and there is no more water. Only think! if a fire were to begin, and they couldn't put it out! And for fear the water should freeze in the buckets, the women have to carry it in the little brewers' coppers, and keep the fires burning under it too!'
'I will go with you,' said Conrad; and the little maiden, though professing to be so brave, seemed by no means sorry to have a companion.
At last the two succeeded in reaching the neighbourhood of the Peter Gate, where a detachment of miners were acting as auxiliaries to the regular troops. Here, as at the other threatened points, soldiers, citizens, and journeymen were all actively engaged. Such parts of the fortifications as had been either injured or destroyed by the enemy's artillery-fire and mines, were now being hastily repaired. The Peter Gate and the barbican in front of it showed unmistakeable signs of the enemy's efforts to force an entrance into the town,—heaps of stones, and yawning holes and pits, alternated with covered galleries, chevaux-de-frise, uprooted palisadoes, and other works which the Freibergers were in hot haste trying to strengthen. The steady industry of so many hundred busy hands in the cold and darkness of that winter night must have struck an onlooker with surprise; but probably his surprise would have been even more excited by the unusual silence in which such heavy work was being done. That they might not attract the enemy's attention and so draw down an attack, the besieged were using the miners' dark lanterns, which open only on one side, instead of such torches or other lights as would generally be employed. From the top of the city wall and gate, these lanterns now shone down like the glimmering fires of innumerable glowworms, while, through the dusky twilight, lit up by their flickering rays, the soft white snowflakes fell steadily and quietly. The dim light and the falling snow combined to transform the brave defenders into so many ghost-like shapes. One such weird figure could be descried, leaning silent and motionless against the parapet at the top of the tower, his heavy double arquebuse by his side. No part of the man stirred save the restless eyes, and they wandered incessantly to and fro, striving to make out the movements of the enemy. The miners, busy constructing a new moat just within the battered Peter Gate, looked, as they glided about, more like mountain-gnomes than human beings. If one of these same human gnomes, with weather-beaten, swarthy face and wrinkled forehead framed in its snowy hood, had suddenly stepped out into the circle of light cast by one of the dark lanterns, people would have been strongly tempted to declare they had seen a ghost.
Up there on the Hospital Mountain, where the enemy's headquarters lay, great watch-fires were blazing through the thick, snow-laden air. Now and then the glare of a mortar shone suddenly out, followed after a few seconds by the thundering explosion. Then a fiery curve traced itself against the sky, the end of which advanced hissing towards the city, and at last burst somewhere among the houses. Such was the picture that presented itself to the eyes of the two children when they reached the Peter Gate on that dark winter's night.
[1] A small German coin worth about a farthing English.